I’ve been ruminating on blogging this whole Congressional corruption scandal, and it occurred to me that a good starting place is to ask (and, ideally, get the answer to) this question: Gentle Reader, do you have a lobbyist in D.C.?
To get the proverbial rolling, let’s list Your Humble Blogger’s lobbyists. I still consider myself a member of the union at my last workplace, however as I am actually not paying dues, my money is not helping to pay AFSCME’s lobbyists. My Best Reader’s current employer has, I believe, no professional lobbyist, but does pay for lobbying work in D.C. as part of the duties of some members of the senior administration. Whether those people actually represent my Best Reader’s interests is debatable, as is the extent to which they even claim to represent them. So that’s two down. My Best Reader also does not (yet) belong to a professional organization that lobbies, although we hope she will very soon.
I don’t believe that my town, county or state governments have hired private lobbyists, although of course part of their job is to, er, liaise with the other levels of government, representing my geographical interests. Some of that is naturally done through the offices of my Representative and Senators, but, for instance, the Governors’ groups lobby, and is (indirectly) funded by the states. Still, the extent to which that counts as YHB being represented by a lobbyist is very, very slim.
On the other hand, our household has contributed to organizations that have used a portion of those funds to pay for lobbying in D.C., including the Red Cross, Medicine Without Borders, and a few groups dealing with hunger, homelessness and AIDS. In all those cases, I consider the lobbying to be in my interest. I’ll call those lobbyists ‘mine’, at least for the duration of the donation.
And, of course, my opinions happen to coincide with those of a variety of organizations and interests represented by a variety of lobbyists. To pick three, let’s say, oh, SEIU, NARAL and the Sierra Club. These are organizations that I could donate to, or become a member of, if only I had the time and money. However, those don’t count, either.
So, it’s just a handful of lobbyists for YHB. How about you, Gentle Reader?
Hm. I don’t think I do at the moment. If I were working in my chosen field, I would, given that I’m a trained librarian. ALA anyone? I think I would consider them to be lobbying sort of on my behalf even if I weren’t a member. And I would most likely be a union member (assuming that county employees here have a union; after all, I do live in a Right to
be ExploitedWork state), so that would probably imply another. I haven’t had money to donate to any groups recently, but that would be another potential set of lobbyists once I’m employed.Nao beat me to it – ALA.
Though I will point out that technically, ALA represents the interests of librarIES, not necessarily librarIANS, a point of some contention recently.
True about the ALA and its interests..